Observing different activities

Yesterday afternoon we had a visit to the library and James picked up another Tin Tin book to read. He is obsessed with Tin Tin and I love the fact that he chose reading over watching TV last night which says a lot for Tin Tin.

Sienna on the other hand was trying out her drawing of a chicken on the blackboard using her hands as wings which I thought was very cute. Over the holidays I'm going to get the kids to do some drawings and paintings to go in our art gallery above the blackboard so that it looks finished.

PS. This morning Sienna took some rubbish to the bin through the garage and there were no screams which means no unwanted visitors this morning. Fast forward 10 mins or so when we were ready to go and the kids got in the car I heard the car door slam and Sienna scream at the top of her voice. The scream that sent a shiver through my spine (yes....more than yesterday's snake scream). I ran as fast as I could and apparently Sienna had put her hand where it shouldn't have been and James had slammed the door on her fingers....seriously my heart was now racing a million miles and hour and James had the door opened, I ran in to get the ice pack and got back to the car and they were both crying.

They were both in the wrong as Sienna often gets in my side of the car while James is getting in behind the drivers seat and I've trained Sienna not to use the bit of the car between the two doors to hoist herself up onto the seat. She's pretty diligent about this but not this morning. James was in tears, Sienna was in tears and I tried to explain to them what to do so in the future it doesn't happen again. James said he checked and her hand wasn't in the door...however that statement doesn't wash when clearly her hand was in the door. Sienna needs to make sure her hand is never near that part of the car and James needs to wait until she is in her car seat before he shuts the door. He was feeling really bad and upset about it. Talk about exciting mornings (not!!) I don't think my heart could take anymore of this. On holidays for 2 weeks now so no rushing out to school in the morning and hopefully we all won't be so tied when we start back with our school routines....life is never dull in this household. Thankfully both kids and Mum survived but I could have done without it that's for sure.

Another Job Description - AKA Snake Wrangler!!!

Well what started out this morning as leaving home on time so the kids could have their 15 mins of play time with their friends before school all went haywire in a few moments. I had asked the kids to get into the car while I grabbed my handbag, car keys and water bottle and while I was inside for 1 minute more than the kids I heard Sienna scream and come running inside. I wasn't worried as yesterday they saw a cat staring at them with green eyes while it was looking at them through the front glass panel on either side of the door and they screamed then.

It was not that shriek that a mother dreads like last week when Sienna screamed and I thought she had fallen backwards from the bar stool in the kitchen, instead she was sitting on the edge of the coffee table which is about 30 cms from the floor and had slipped down off it with the back of her neck hitting the edge of the table. Now that was an "OMG, is she alright scream" as I was running towards the lounge room. So in terms of my concern, the coffee table incident was an 11 out of 10 and this mornings scream was about a 5 out of 10. So I'm not overly worried at this stage and she came racing inside to say that there was a snake on the side of the car. I said "that's ridiculous" or words to that effect, "it couldn't possibly be". In my head in that split second moment I'm picturing a big snake (like what was on Bondi Vet last week, 7 metres huge round scary thing) so I'm thinking there is no way a snake could hold onto the side of the car so it can't be true. Again, she says "no really mum, there's a snake on the side of the car" so I proceeded to investigate and when I walked around to the side OMG it was indeed a snake. I was terrified even though in snake terms it's tiny but it's the closest I've ever been to a snake and this snake was on my car that we needed to drive to school in. By this stage James had hopped out of the car and so there we were, the 3 of us, looking at this snake on the side of Sienna's car window. ummm...what to do, I stood on the driveway and turned around and looked at my neighbours houses and thought, it's 8.00 am on a Thursday morning most men would already be at the office by now so it was up to me to sort this snake problem out asap. Right, first things first, we need a photo, hang on, we also need to get rid of the snake before it crawls onto the roof in which case it's capture would be well out of my league of expertise. I sent James inside to go out the back and get our big outdoor broom. I raced inside and got the camera and snapped these two very quick photos, I even put it on AV and not manual before I got to the car. I then gave my camera to James and told him to carefully take that inside along with Sienna and stay there.

I thought I just have to do this so we can claim our car back so I put the broom on the snake and brushed it hard to the right flinging the snake across the driveway. It got up and started heading towards our front garden so I moved very quickly to sweep it into the gutter. It slithered across the road to the tree on the footpath and it was gone before my very eyes. SERIOUSLY FOLKS..... a mother's job is never done.... so now I can add "Snake Wrangler" to the ever growing list of jobs that encumbers motherhood. Cook, Cleaner, Maid, Taxi Driver, Financial Expert, Photographer, Decorator, Nurse, Grocery Shopper, Gardener, Event Planner, Memory Keeper oh yeh and my new skills as a Snake Wrangler..... I was so scared but more scared if that snake got onto the roof of my car. A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do to protect her babies from the big bad snake, well to me anyway, to someone who is used to these things it would be considered a teeny little snake (Sharon you can stop laughing now, I'm sure you see these every day of the week on your property in far North Queensland) but for a little city girl like myself it was very traumatic!!!

I said to the kids that this is definitely the photo of the day. It gives me the creeps just looking at it however this story had to be recorded as I did not want it to be the one that got away !!! get it (ha ha .... I know, I have to make light of it because I was very scared). Grasshoppers jumping on me scare me, and in fact I scream if those big brown ones come anywhere near me.... cochroaches on the other hand, they don't frighten me but I don't want them in my house either. And that folks is the story of why my kids missed out on playtime this morning. Who needs an exciting life when you can read other people's stories without the danger element.

Queensland Election Results 2012

Last Saturday on the 24th March, 2012 Queensland voted in a new government. It was a landslide victory which will go down in Australian politics history and we now have a new Premier, Mr Campbell Newman.

He was born on 12th August, 1963 and is the 38th Premier of Queensland. Campbell Newman previously held the position of the Lord Mayor of Brisbane from 2004 to 2011 and during that time he was re-elected in 2008. He was an excellent Lord Mayor so hopefully he is up for the challenge of managing this huge State of Queensland.

I was explaining to the kids about politics and was trying to work out the best way to explain how we vote etc. About a week ago James had to give a talk on why one subject is better than the other. He chose ART vs MATHS and I used this analogy. I said lets say you had to get up at Assembly on Friday and explain to all the students the reason they should vote for ARTS as a subject. You would have to give lots of reasons why they should vote for ARTS. Then your friend would get up in front of the school and give all the reasons why MATHS is great and why they should vote for MATHS. I said you can only have one subject and every student gets to decide. There are lots of reasons why ARTS or MATHS is good, it's just convincing the students to vote for your subject and the reasons why. James totally got this and could understand what we were all doing with the voting.

On the way to school every morning before the election there are people with signs for Campbell Newman or Kate Jones waving to the motorists so it's right in our face every day. James told me that Campbell Newman was going to win because he had seen more signs for Campbell. I explained to him that it will be how many people vote for him, not how many people are on the side of the road with the signs.

I remember as a child when the elections were on tv they would have the boring old tally room on all night and we (the kids) couldn't watch any normal tv. We found it all so boring however last Saturday night my sister and I were sitting on the couch glued to what was happening on the tv and the tally room. We found it all very bizarre considering how we felt about it as kids. Mind you, this election was pretty significant. Above is the "before" and "after" of the cabinet positions.

They mentioned on the news that Canada has seen this type of landside victory before. Check out these Canadian stats:-

Prince Edward Island general election, 1935, in which the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island under Walter Lea won every seat in the legislature, the first time in the history of the British Empire that that happened.
Canadian federal election, 1958, in which the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada won 208 seats out of 265.
Canadian federal election, 1984, in which the Progressive Conservatives won 211 seats out of 282.
New Brunswick general election, 1987, in which the Liberal Party of New Brunswick won every seat in the legislature.
Prince Edward Island general election, 1993, in which the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island under Catherine Callbeck won 31 of 32 seats in the legislature.
Prince Edward Island general election, 2000 in which the Progressive Conservative Party of Prince Edward Island under Pat Binns won 26 of 27 seats in the legislature.
British Columbia general election, 2001, in which 77 of 79 seats were won by the British Columbia Liberal Party.
Newfoundland and Labrador general election, 2007, in which Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador won 44 of 48 seats.
Quebec general election, 1973, in which the Quebec Liberal Party under Robert Bourassa won 102 out of 110 seats in the Quebec National Assembly.
Saskatchewan general election, 2011, in which the Saskatchewan Party under Brad Wall won 49 out of 58 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan.

Environment Morning at School

Sienna's class has been learning all about the different environments this term and last week the kids got to dress up for their environment and bring a plate of food. Sienna had the desert which is funny because James had the desert as well when he was in grade 1. Sienna's costume was made up of an old brown towel, a belt off a pair of her jeans and a horse which she pretended was her camel. She was a camel rider in the desert and was pretty happy with her outfit. On the food front we put together some grapes on toothpicks and called them grubs.

AFL Season

Since James was born in Melbourne the home of AFL it seems fitting that he join our local AFL Junior Under 8's team. So I now have a new title to add to my skill set "Footy Mum". We signed up about two months ago, had a trip to the dentist to get fitted with a mouth guard, got the team shirt, footy boots and he was rearing to go.

Last Thursday night was going to be their first training session however it was rained out. He did get to meet 2 other kids who will be on the team and one of them actually goes to his school. They did get to have 10 minutes of handball and kicking before it poured down rain. The night wasn't a total loss as they put on a Welcome Sausage Sizzle which when it's raining always goes down well. Here's a few photos of him in our backyard before we left.

BBQ DINNER

It's starting to get a little bit cooler in the evenings and early mornings now however the other night it was nice enough to have a bbq and eat at the table outside. I'm still loving our little Everdure bbq (equivalent to a Weber Q) rather than the big Everdure one we previously had because it's no trouble to turn the gas on and cook 8 little sausages. I never bothered turning the big one on to cook a few sausages as it seemed overkill however, this little one gets used without a moments thought. I cooked some delicious steak on the bbq as well this week. Big is not always better!!!

SENIOR FORMAL

My nephew Matthew had his Senior Formal this weekend and I put my hand up to take the photos of him and his girlfriend. I had to take the photos a little earlier than I would have liked because the kids and parents had a pre-formal party to attend at 5.30 pm and given the sunset time of 6.10 pm all the photos had to be over by 5.30 pm which is around about the start of the best shooting time. My favourite photo of the afternoon was the last photo I took of them which is the first photo in this post. You might notice Matthew was standing on tippy toes because he looks slightly taller than her. It's a SOOC (straight out of camera) shot and hands down this is my favourite photo. Nice to do a photo shoot of teenagers all dressed up for a night out. I gave Matthew the best 40 photos tonight and they went up on facebook immediately so I have no problems putting them on my blog.

It's a great memory which will end up getting printed in my blog book. By the way my blog book I ordered has already shipped from the States in about 3 days flat so I'm looking forward to it arriving to see what it's like.

EVERYDAY LIFE

I love taking photos of the kids doing things and on this particular afternoon they were both in their rooms occupying themselves. James was into his lego and Sienna was cutting a butterfly out of paper. Project Life is a reminder that it's the little everyday moments that make up most of our daily lives and I just love photographing them.

FIRST TOOTH - 21ST FEBRUARY, 2012

The week before Sienna turned 6 she lost her very first tooth front and centre. The tooth was very wriggly for a week or so and by the time it was nearly out it was higher than all the others. It's amazing how teeth work really, coming out and getting new ones to replace them. She has a complete little hole in the shape of the tooth but I can't see the new tooth yet. It came out when she was at school and she was very excited in the afternoon at pick up time to give me the good news. The tooth fairy came over night and she received a $2 coin in the bowl. She told me she wanted to buy an ice block at school the next day and I objected to one tooth falling out and buying a sugar product with the money. They both get a 50 cent ice block on Fridays from the tuck shop so I told her she had to keep the $2. The money is somewhere around the house still as she was carrying it around with her everywhere she went.

And a little bit of education here for you..... did you know that Sharks grow a new set of teeth every two weeks to replace their worn teeth, that's a hell of a lot of teeth in my opinion.

MAGIC TRICK ANSWER from yesterday..... drink soft drink first then fill the can half with water and voila..... magic.